The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman) is a 1915 American silentepicdrama film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay (with Frank E. Woods), and co-produced the film (with Harry Aitken). It was released on February 8, 1915. The film was originally presented in two parts, separated by an intermission. It was the first 12-reel film in America.

The film was a commercial success, though it was highly controversial owing to its portrayal of black men (some played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women, and the portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan (whose original founding is dramatized) as a heroic force.[6][7] There were widespread African-American protests against The Birth of a Nation, such as in Boston, while thousands of white Bostonians flocked to see the film.[8] The NAACP spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to ban the film.[8] Griffith's indignation at efforts to censor or ban the film motivated him to produce Intolerance the following year.[9]

The film is also credited as one of the events that inspired the formation of the "second era" Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia, in the same year. The Birth of a Nation was used as a recruiting tool for the KKK.[10] Under Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, it was the first motion picture to be screened in the White House.[11][12]

Despite the film's racist content, Griffith's innovative techniques and storytelling power have made The Birth of a Nation one of the landmarks of film history.[13][14]

The film follows two juxtaposed families: the Northern Stonemans--abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman, based on the Reconstruction-era Congressman Thaddeus Stevens,;[15][16] his two sons and his daughter Elsie—and the Southern Camerons, a family including two daughters, Margaret and Flora, and three sons, most notably Ben.

The Stoneman brothers visit the Camerons at their South Carolina estate, representing the Old South. Phil, the elder Stoneman son, falls in love with Margaret Cameron, while young Ben Cameron idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War begins, these young men enlist in their respective armies.

A black militia acting under a white leader ransacks the Cameron house; the Cameron women are rescued by Confederate soldiers who rout the militia. Meanwhile, the younger Stoneman and two of the Cameron brothers are killed in the war. Ben Cameron is wounded after a heroic charge at the Siege of Petersburg, as a result of which he earns the nickname "the Little Colonel". He is taken to a Northern hospital where he at last meets the Elsie Stoneman of the picture he has been carrying; she is working there as a nurse. While recovering, Cameron is told that he will be hanged for being a Confederate guerrilla. Elsie takes Cameron's mother, who had traveled to Washington to tend her son, to see Abraham Lincoln, and the mother persuades the President to issue a pardon to Ben Cameron.

Stoneman and his protégé Silas Lynch, a mulatto exhibiting psychopathic characteristics,[18] travel to South Carolina to observe the implementation of Reconstruction policies firsthand. Black occupation soldiers are seen parading through the streets and pushing white residents aside on the sidewalks. During the election, in which Lynch is elected Lieutenant Governor, whites are seen being prevented from voting while blacks are observed stuffing the ballot boxes. The newly elected, mostly black legislature is shown at their desks displaying inappropriate behavior, such as one member taking off his shoe and putting his feet up on his desk, and others drinking liquor and feasting on stereotypically African American fare such as fried chicken. The legislature passes laws requiring white civilians to salute black soldiers and allowing mixed-race marriages. Meanwhile, inspired by observing white children pretending to be ghosts to scare black children, Ben fights back by forming the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, Elsie breaks off her relationship with Ben, out of loyalty to her father. Later, Flora Cameron goes off alone into the woods to fetch water and is followed by Gus, a freedman and soldier who is now a Captain. He confronts Flora and tells her that he desires to get married. Frightened, she flees into the forest, pursued by Gus. Trapped on a precipice, Flora warns Gus she will jump if he comes any closer. When he does, she leaps to her death. Having run through the forest looking for her, Ben has seen her jump; he holds her as she dies, then carries her body back to the Cameron home. In response, the Klan hunts down Gus, tries him, finds him guilty, lynches him, and delivers his corpse to Lt. Gov. Lynch's doorstep.

Lynch then orders a crackdown on the Klan. Dr. Cameron, Ben's father, is arrested for possessing Ben's Klan costume, now considered a crime punishable by death. His faithful black servants rescue him with help from Phil Stoneman. Together they flee, along with Margaret Cameron. When their wagon breaks down along the way, they make their way through the woods to a small hut which is home to two sympathetic former Union soldiers, who agree to hide them. As an intertitle states, "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright."

Congressman Stoneman leaves to avoid being connected with Lt. Gov. Lynch's crackdown. Elsie, learning of Dr. Cameron's arrest, goes to Lynch to plead for his release. Lynch, who had been lusting after Elsie, tries to force her to marry him, which causes her to faint. Stoneman returns, causing Elsie to be placed in another room. At first, Stoneman is happy when Lynch tells him he wants to marry a white woman, but is then angered when Lynch tells him that it is Stoneman's daughter. Undercover Klansmen spies discover Elsie's plight when she breaks a window and cries out for help, and the Klansmen go to get help. Elsie falls unconscious again, and revives while gagged and being bound. The Klan, gathered together at full strength and with Ben leading them, rides in to regain control of the town. When news about Elsie reaches Ben, he and others go to her rescue. Elsie frees her mouth and screams for help. Lynch is captured. Victorious, the Klansmen celebrate in the streets. Meanwhile, Lynch's militia surrounds and attacks the hut where the Camerons are hiding. The Klansmen, with Ben at their head, race in to save them just in time.

The next election day, blacks find a line of mounted and armed Klansmen just outside their homes, and are intimidated into not voting. The film concludes with a double wedding as Margaret Cameron marries Phil Stoneman and Elsie Stoneman marries Ben Cameron. The masses are shown oppressed by a giant warlike figure who gradually fades away. The scene shifts to another group finding peace under the image of Jesus Christ. The penultimate title rhetorically asks: "Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more? But instead-the gentle Prince in the Hall of Brotherly Love in the City of Peace."

Hooded Klansmen catch Gus, a black man described in the film as "a renegade, a product of the vicious doctrines spread by the carpetbaggers." Gus was portrayed in blackface by white actor Walter Long.

The Birth of a Nation began filming in 1914 and pioneered such camera techniques as the use of panoramic long shots, the iris effects, still-shots, night photography, panning camera shots, and a carefully staged battle sequence with hundreds of extras made to look like thousands. It also contains many new artistic techniques, such as color tinting for dramatic purposes, building up the plot to an exciting climax, dramatizing history alongside fiction, and featuring its own musical score written for an orchestra.[citation needed]

When the film was released, it shattered both box office and film-length records, running three hours and ten minutes. In 1998, it was voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" (#44) by the American Film Institute.

The film was based on Thomas Dixon, Jr.'s novels The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots. It was originally to have been shot in Kinemacolor but D. W. Griffith took over the Hollywood studio of Kinemacolor and Kinemacolor's plans to film Dixon's novel. Griffith, whose father served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, agreed to pay Thomas Dixon $10,000 (equal to $235,449 today) for the rights to his play The Clansman. Since he ran out of money and could afford only $2,500 of the original option, Griffith offered Dixon 25 percent interest in the picture. Dixon reluctantly agreed, and the unprecedented success of the film made him rich. Dixon's proceeds were the largest sum any author had received for a motion picture story and amounted to several million dollars.[citation needed]

Griffith's budget started at US$40,000 (equal to $941,794 today), but the film finally cost $112,000[3] (the equivalent of $2.41 million in 2010).[19] As a result, Griffith had to seek new sources of capital for his film. A ticket to the film cost a record $2 (equal to $46.63 today).[19]

West Point engineers provided technical advice on the Civil War battle scenes. They provided Griffith with the artillery used in the film.[20]

The film premiered on February 8, 1915, at Clune's Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. At its premiere the film was entitled The Clansman, but the title was later changed to The Birth of a Nation to reflect Griffith's belief that the United States emerged from the American Civil War and Reconstruction as a unified nation.[21]

Sheet music for "The Perfect Song", one of the themes Breil composed for the film.

Although the film is regarded as a landmark in terms of its dramatic and visual accomplishments, it was arguably equally revolutionary for its use of music.[23] Though film was still silent at the time, it was common practice to distribute musical cue sheets, or less commonly, full scores (usually for organ or piano accompaniment) along with each print of a film.[24]

For The Birth of a Nation, composer Joseph Carl Breil created a three-hour-long musical score that combined all three types of music in use at the time: adaptations of existing works by classical composers, new arrangements of well-known melodies, and original composed music.[23] Though it had been specifically composed for the film, Breil's score was not used for the Los Angeles première of the film at Clune's Auditorium; rather, a score compiled by Carli Elinor was performed in its stead, and this score was used exclusively in West Coast showings. Breil's score was not used until the film debuted in New York at the Liberty Theatre, and was the score utilized in all showings save those on the West Coast.[25][26]

In his original compositions for the film, Breil wrote numerous leitmotifs to accompany the appearance of specific characters. The principal love theme that was created for the romance between Elsie Stoneman and Ben Cameron was published as "The Perfect Song" and is regarded as the first marketed "theme song" from a film; it was later even used as the theme song for the popular radio and television sitcom Amos 'n' Andy.[25][26]

George Beranger in an actual Confederate uniform; the film used Confederate Army surplus uniforms since the Civil War was still recent enough in 1915 for them to be readily available.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, protested premieres of the film in numerous cities. According to the historian David Copeland, "by the time of the movie's March 3 [1915] premiere in New York City, its subject matter had embroiled the film in charges of racism, protests, and calls for censorship, which began after the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP requested the city's film board ban the movie. Since film boards were composed almost entirely of whites, few review boards initially banned Griffith's picture".[28] The NAACP also conducted a public education campaign, publishing articles protesting the film's fabrications and inaccuracies, organizing petitions against it, and conducting education on the facts of the war and Reconstruction.[29]

When the film was shown, riots broke out in Boston, Philadelphia and other major cities. The film's inflammatory character was a catalyst for gangs of whites to attack blacks. In Lafayette, Indiana, after seeing the film, a white man murdered a black teenager.[30] The mayor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who banned the film in 1915 after meeting with a delegation of black citizens, was the first of twelve mayors who banned or censored the film out of concern that its screening would promote race prejudice.[31] The cities of Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and St. Louis refused to allow the film to open.

Thomas Dixon, Jr., author of the source play The Clansman, was a former classmate of Woodrow Wilson at Johns Hopkins University. Dixon arranged a screening at the White House, for then-President Wilson, members of his cabinet, and their families. Wilson was reported to have said about the film, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true". In Wilson: The New Freedom, the historian Arthur Link quotes Wilson's aide, Joseph Tumulty, who denied Wilson said this and also claims that "the President was entirely unaware of the nature of the play before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation of it."[32] Historians believe the quote attributed to Wilson originated with Dixon, who was relentless in publicizing the film. It has been repeated so often in print that it has taken on a life of its own. Dixon went so far as to promote the film as "Federally endorsed". After controversy over the film had grown, Wilson wrote that he disapproved of the "unfortunate production."[33]

Griffith, indignant at the film's negative critical reception, wrote letters to newspapers, and published a pamphlet in which he accused his critics of censoring unpopular opinions.[34] He conceived his next film, Intolerance (1916), as a response to those who had censored his film.[34]

The film's initial reception from the audiences were positive. At over three hours in length (including intermissions), American moviegoers had never seen anything like it — spectacular battlefield panoramas, operatic melodrama and thrilling chase scenes. The white audiences responded with tears, gasps, applause, hisses and raucous cheering.[35]

Soon after World War I, in 1918, Emmett J. Scott helped produce and John W. Noble directed The Birth of a Race, hoping to capitalize on the success of Griffith's film by presenting a film set during the war. It featured a German-American family divided by the war, with sons fighting on either side, and the one loyal to the United States surviving to be part of the victory.[36]

In 1919, the director/producer/writer Oscar Micheaux released Within Our Gates, a response from the African-American community. Notably, he reversed a key scene of Griffith's film by depicting a white man assaulting a black woman.

The film was remixed in 2004 as Rebirth of a Nation, a live cinema experience by DJ Spooky at Lincoln Center, and has toured at many venues around the world including The Acropolis as a live cinema "remix". The remix version was also presented at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York[37]

The box office gross of The Birth of a Nation is not known, and was long subject to exaggeration.[38] In 1940, Time magazine reported the film's cumulative gross as more than $15 million.[39] The Encyclopedia of American Race Riots says The Birth of a Nation earned "more than $10 million at the box office in 1915. By 1949, it had earned $50 million."[40] In 1977, Variety revised its estimate of the producer's gross from $50 million down to $5 million.[5] The film historian Richard Schickel says the film grossed slightly less than that—about $4.8 million—for Epoch, the production company, by the end of 1917, but the producer's gross is not the same as the box office gross.[5] In the biggest cities, Epoch negotiated with individual theater owners for a percentage of the box office; elsewhere the producer sold all rights in a particular state to a single distributor (an arrangement known as "state's rights" distribution).[41] Schickel says that under the state's rights contracts, Epoch typically received about 10% of the box office gross—which theater owners often underreported—and concludes that "Birth certainly generated more than $60 million in box-office business in its first run".[5]

Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People is quoted in The Birth of a Nation.

The film is controversial due to its interpretation of history. University of Houston historian Steven Mintz summarizes its message as follows: Reconstruction was a disaster, blacks could never be integrated into white society as equals, and the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified to reestablish honest government.[42] The South is portrayed as a victim. The first overt mentioning of the war is the scene in which Abraham Lincoln signs the call for first 75,000 volunteers. However, the first aggression in the Civil War, made when the Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in 1861, is not mentioned in the film.[43] The film suggested that the Ku Klux Klan restored order to the postwar South, which was depicted as endangered by abolitionists, freedmen, and carpetbaggingRepublican politicians from the North. This reflects the so-called Dunning School of historiography.[44] The film portrays President Abraham Lincoln as friend of the Confederacy, and refers to him as "the Great Heart".[45] The two romances depicted in the film, Phil Stoneman with Margaret Cameron and Ben Cameron with Elsie Stoneman, reflect Griffith's retelling of history. The couples are used as a metaphor, representing the film's broader message of the need for the reconciliation of the North and South to defend white supremacy. [46] Among both couples, there is an attraction that forms before the war, stemming from the friendship between their families. With the war, though, both families are split apart, and their losses culminate in the end of the war with the debunking of white supremacy. One of the intertitles clearly sums up the message of unity, stating, "The former enemies of North and South are united again in defense of their Aryan birthright." [47]

Some historians, such as E. Merton Coulter in his The South Under Reconstruction (1947), maintained the Dunning School view after World War II. Today, the Dunning School position is largely seen as a product of anti-black racism of the early 20th century, by which many Americans held that black Americans were unequal as citizens.

... stung by criticisms that the second half of his masterpiece was racist in its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its brutal images of blacks, Griffith tried to make amends in Intolerance (1916), which criticized prejudice. And in Broken Blossoms he told perhaps the first interracial love story in the movies—even though, to be sure, it's an idealized love with no touching.[48]

Despite some similarities between the Congressman Stoneman character and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Rep. Stevens did not have the family members described and did not move to South Carolina during Reconstruction. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1868. However, Stevens was widely rumored to keep a biracial mistress-housekeeper, who was generously provided for in his will.[49]

The depictions of mass Klan paramilitary actions do not seem to have historical equivalents, although there were incidents in 1871 where Klan groups traveled from other areas in fairly large numbers to aid localities in disarming local companies of the all-black portion of the state militia under various justifications, prior to the eventual Federal troop intervention, and the organized Klan's continued activities as small groups of "night riders."[50]

The civil rights movement and other social movements created a new generation of historians, such as scholar Eric Foner, who led a reassessment of Reconstruction. Building on W.E.B. DuBois' work but also adding new sources, they focused on achievements of the African-American and white Republican coalitions, such as establishment of universal public education and charitable institutions in the South and extension of suffrage to black men. In response, the Southern-dominated Democratic Party and its affiliated white militias used extensive terrorism, intimidation and outright assassinations to suppress African-American leaders and voting in the 1870s and to regain power.[51]

Released in 1915, The Birth of a Nation has been credited as groundbreaking among its contemporaries for its innovative application of the medium of film. According to the film historian Kevin Brownlow, the film was "astounding in its time" and initiated "so many advances in film-making technique that it was rendered obsolete within a few years."[52] The content of the work, however, has received widespread criticism for its blatantly racist and fantastical depictions of scenes that are presented onscreen as if in documentary form. Film critic Roger Ebert writes, "Certainly The Birth of a Nation (1915) presents a challenge for modern audiences. Unaccustomed to silent films and uninterested in film history, they find it quaint and not to their taste. Those evolved enough to understand what they are looking at find the early and wartime scenes brilliant, but cringe during the postwar and Reconstruction scenes, which are racist in the ham-handed way of an old minstrel show or a vile comic pamphlet."[53]

In 1992, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Despite its controversial story, the film has been praised by film critics such as Roger Ebert, who said: "The Birth of a Nation is not a bad film because it argues for evil. Like Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, it is a great film that argues for evil. To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil."[53] The website Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews from various sources, indicates the film has a 100% "fresh" (positive) rating.[55]

According to a 2002 article in the Los Angeles Times, the film facilitated the refounding of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.[56] As late as the 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan continued to use the film as a recruitment tool.

One famous part of the film was added by Griffith only on the second run of the film[59] and is missing from most online versions of the film (presumably taken from first run prints.)[60]
These are the second and third of three opening title cards which defend the film. The added titles read:

A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURE: We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue – the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word – that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare

and

If in this work we have conveyed to the mind the ravages of war to the end that war may be held in abhorrence, this effort will not have been in vain.

Various film historians have expressed a range of views about these titles. To Nicholas Andrew Miller, this shows that "Griffith's greatest achievement in The Birth of a Nation was that he brought the cinema's capacity for spectacle... under the rein of an outdated, but comfortably literary form of historical narrative. Griffith's models... are not the pioneers of film spectacle... but the giants of literary narrative."[61] On the other hand, S. Kittrell Rushing complains about Griffith's "didactic" title-cards,[62] while Stanley Corkin complains that Griffith "masks his idea of fact in the rhetoric of high art and free expression" and creates film which "erodes the very ideal" of "liberty" which he asserts.[63]

With the film being in the public domain, many VHS versions of the film exist of varying quality.

A region 0 DVD was released on November 17, 1998, by Image Entertainment, along with a 24-minute documentary covering the production. Kino Video released another region 0 version on August 14, 2002, and a region 0 Blu-ray edition on November 22, 2011. Both came with various Civil War shorts directed by Griffith, "The Making of The Birth of a Nation" (1992), and other extras.

In The UK, the film was released on Blu-ray on July 22, 2013, by Eureka Entertainment as part of their "Masters of Cinema" collection.

Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (1973).

Brodie, Fawn M.Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South (New York, 1959), p. 86–93. Corrects the historical record as to Dixon's false representation of Stevens in this film with regard to his racial views and relations with his housekeeper.

Franklin, John Hope, "Propaganda as History" pp. 10–23 in Race and History: Selected Essays 1938–1988 (Louisiana State University Press, 1989); first published in The Massachusetts Review, 1979. Describes the history of the novel The Clan and this film.

Franklin, John Hope, Reconstruction After the Civil War (Chicago, 1961), p. 5–7.

Korngold, Ralph, Thaddeus Stevens. A Being Darkly Wise and Rudely Great (New York: 1955) pp. 72–76. corrects Dixon's false characterization of Stevens' racial views and of his dealings with his housekeeper.

Stokes, Melvyn, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation: A History of "The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). The latest study of the film's making and subsequent career.

Williamson, Joel, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1965). This book corrects Dixon's false reporting of Reconstruction, as shown in his novel, his play and this film.